Between Giants: The Battle for the Baltics in World War II

PREFACE

A quote often attributed – possibly incorrectly – to Josef Stalin is that ‘the death of one person is a tragedy; the death of one million is a statistic’. Such a statement could certainly be said to apply to the Baltic States. The destruction and suffering endured by many nations during the Second World War are beyond question, but often the scale of the numbers involved can reduce their impact. The German atrocities in the Soviet Union, followed by Soviet atrocities in Germany, are well known and widely documented, but in terms of the proportion of the population lost, the countries caught between these powerful protagonists – Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – suffered far more than any other. Whilst the deaths in Poland are relatively well known, the suffering in the Baltic States is rarely mentioned, even though their population loss, at roughly 20 per cent, was higher than that of any country other than Poland.

These terrible casualties were brought about by the unique circumstances of these three nations, which suffered three occupations in quick succession – the first Soviet occupation in 1939, the German occupation in 1941 and the second Soviet occupation in 1944–45, which would last nearly half a century. But in contrast to the situation in Poland, many of the deaths of Baltic citizens, particularly in Lithuania and Latvia, were at the hands of their fellow Balts, as the occupying powers ruthlessly exploited divisions within these countries. And, unlike Poland, the three nations were forced by their unique situation to offer support, albeit limited and reluctant, to Germany, leaving them unable to claim the backing of the victorious Allies in the post-war settlement.

This book does not attempt to judge the decisions made by the leaders and people of the Baltic States, who struggled to reconcile the situation in which they found themselves with their own aspirations; it seeks to give an account of the terrible destruction and bloodshed that had such a devastating effect on this corner of Europe, the consequences of which are still felt today.

INTRODUCTION

For several hundred years, the people of the Baltic States were little more than pawns in the wars fought by foreign rulers on their lands. During this period, their own aspirations – even those of the relatively small numbers of more affluent Balts – were of no consequence. Eventually, this led to the rise of nationalist movements in the late 18th century, and the series of wars that brought independence in the wake of the First World War. But despite their similar histories during these wars, and the Second World War that followed, the origins of the three nations were very different, resulting in three very distinct countries.

Lithuania, the most southerly of the Baltic States, was the first of the three to form a national entity when Mindaugas was crowned as its first king in 1253. Ten years later, his country began a long conflict with the crusading Teutonic Knights from neighbouring Prussia. In 1385, Lithuania formed a union with Poland and embraced Christianity for the first time; the two nations now cooperated against their shared enemy in Prussia, and won a decisive victory over the Teutonic Knights at Tannenberg or Grunwald in 1410. As the Prussian threat declined, many Lithuanian nobles sought to break the union with Poland, but the rising power of the Grand Duchy of Muscovy forced Poland and Lithuania into ever-closer cooperation. The resultant commonwealth lasted until it was dismembered during the First Partition of Poland in 1772. Thereafter, Lithuania became part of the Russian Empire.

Latvia, immediately to the north of Lithuania, was peopled by similar tribes to the original Lithuanians. They slowly merged into five distinct groupings, and resisted attempts by missionaries to introduce Christianity in the late 12th century. Like the tribes of Estonia, the Latvians were separated from the depths of Russia by dense forests and swamps, and until the advent of seaborne trade from the west they enjoyed a relatively isolated, if hard and frugal, existence. The traders who accompanied the Christian missionaries established a series of ports along the Baltic coast to facilitate the growing trade with northern Europe, and many of these ports became part of the Hanseatic League, a trading network of independent cities that originated in the German port of Lübeck. The resistance of the local people to Christianity attracted the attention of the German crusading orders, for whose members a crusade in the pagan Baltic region was regarded as spiritually equivalent to the much harder task of fighting to recapture the Holy Land; it had the added benefit of being much closer to home, and was therefore far easier – and cheaper – to organise. The sons of several kings of Western Europe served short spells in the Baltic Crusades, and were able to join the fighting orders and return home within a year. In 1202, the Bishop of Riga, whose post had only been in existence for a year, established a new order of knights, the Brotherhood of the Sword, which rapidly conquered the territory known as Livonia. In 1236, the knights of the order raided the territory of the Samogitians, one of the larger local tribes. As they returned home, they found their way blocked by a force of Samogitian warriors near the small settlement of Saule, today known as Šiauliai. In the fighting that followed, nearly the entire Christian army, which numbered 3,000, was killed, including up to 60 knights. Volkwyn, the Master of the Order, was amongst the dead. Tribes to the south of the River Daugava, who had been laboriously conquered by the Sword Brothers, rose up in revolt. In order to survive, the remaining knights were transformed into the Livonian Order, formally a branch of the Teutonic Knights of Prussia, though the presence of Lithuania between the territories controlled by the two crusading orders helped prevent a merging of their strength. As the power of the crusading orders declined, Latvian territory was annexed by its neighbours, with southern parts coming under Lithuanian and Polish control while Sweden occupied northern Livonia. Eventually, like Lithuania, Latvia was absorbed into the Russian Empire.

Estonia was culturally different from its two southern neighbours, with its language having far more in common with Finnish. It was the last part of the region to embrace Christianity, coming under the influence of the Teutonic crusaders from 1208 onwards. Shortly after, Denmark took an interest in the area, occupying the northern parts of the country. Local people rose up against Danish rule in 1343, and not long afterwards the Danes sold their interest in the region to the Livonian Order; an ecclesiastical state called Terra Mariana was then established under Livonian control. It was perhaps typical of the history of the region that various factions – the Livonian Knights, the ecclesiastical authorities and local secular Baltic German interests – fought a series of civil wars for control of Estonia, with little or no regard for the local people, other than as a source of manpower for their forces. When the Livonian Order was finally defeated in 1345, the various factions agreed to put aside their differences and formed the Livonian Confederation. In the 16th century, the Danes took a renewed interest in Estonia, before Sweden gained control of the northern part of the country. A series of wars between Sweden on the one hand, and the Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth on the other, followed. Eventually, the Swedes gained complete control of the territory of modern Estonia, and forced the German landowners to grant greater autonomy to the Estonian peasantry, but in 1710, the region came under Russian control as a result of the Great Northern War. For the Estonians, this was more than the replacement of one foreign ruler by another; the Russians revoked the limited reforms that the Swedes had initiated, restoring serfdom and the dominance of the Baltic German nobility.

These different histories, with a common end point, left the three nations with distinct differences as well as similarities. Because of its association with Poland, Lithuania was a largely Catholic country, and its nobility had close family links with the Polish aristocracy. Estonia and Latvia, by contrast, had an ethnically German ruling and landowning class, who formed the bulk of the population of the larger towns and cities, and both countries followed much of Germany and Scandinavia in embracing Lutheran Christianity. In return for the restoration of their rights over the local peasantry, the Baltic German families provided the Russian Empire with many of its finest administrators, diplomats and army officers; inevitably, this resulted in great hostility between the ethnic Estonians and Latvians, and their Baltic German overlords. The roots of the Baltic antipathy to Russia that played such a big part in the region’s history in the 20th century therefore stretched back several hundred years.

The reimposition of serfdom proved to be short-lived, and was reversed in Estonia and parts of Latvia by 1819. Whatever the intention of this step, it proved to be of little value to the local peasants, as land remained in the control of the German landowning families, and the newly liberated former serfs lacked the financial resources to purchase land of their own. It was only in the middle of the 19th century that a limited degree of land reform occurred. At the same time, relaxation of laws relating to compulsory membership of trading guilds resulted in more Latvians and Estonians moving from the countryside into the large coastal cities; the population of Tallinn was over 50 per cent Estonian by 1871, and grew further to over 67 per cent Estonian by 1897. During the same period, the Latvian population of Riga grew from 23 to 42 per cent.

Religion was another field in which cultural differences provided ample opportunities for conflict. Competition between the established churches in the Baltic States – the Lutheran church in Latvia and Estonia and the Roman Catholic church in Lithuania – and the Russian Orthodox church led to an increase in publications in Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian, and to a rapid increase in literacy – by the end of the century, almost the entire population of the Baltic States was literate.¹ A common feature in all three countries during the 19th century was an attempt by Russia to impose Russian culture upon the region. In addition to the efforts of the Orthodox Church, all school education was compulsorily in Russian, and in Lithuania the publication of Latin alphabet books in Lithuanian was banned until 1904. Catholics in Lithuania were barred from local government posts in 1894, a move which resulted in a tight association in the region between nationalist sentiment and the Catholic Church. Russian efforts were undermined by the presence of a substantial Lithuanian population in nearby East Prussia, where material continued to be published in Lithuanian and smuggled across the border. Unlike Latvia and Estonia, Lithuania was comparatively untouched by the industrial revolution, and remained a largely agricultural state. Consequently, much of its growing population emigrated to the New World rather than to the industrial cities, as was the case in the two northern countries.

The 20th century started with widespread turmoil across the Russian Empire. In 1905, nationalists convened assemblies in Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius, while in the countryside of Estonia and Latvia, the unrest targeted the unpopular German aristocracy. Some 200 country manors were set ablaze, and about 300 people were killed. Some of the victims were rich landowners, others were Latvians and Estonians who in the opinion of their neighbours were sympathetic to the Baltic Germans. A few were targeted for the flimsiest of associations with the landowning aristocracy, as was the case of an elderly parson in the town of Jelgava, or Mitau:

His chief delight had been the collection of Lettish [Latvian] songs, riddles, proverbs and legends. Over this labour he had gone blind … Suddenly the peasants attacked his parsonage, shot his sexton, threatened his daughter, burned his library, smashed his china, trampled on his harpsichord, and made a bonfire of his furniture in the garden, kindling it with his manuscripts.²

In Lithuania, by contrast, there was much less civil disturbance, with a few attacks on Russian teachers and the Orthodox clergy. The Russian response varied in accord with the intensity of the trouble: in Lithuania, there was limited repression, while in Tallinn and Riga the Russian Army fired on protestors, killing over 150 and wounding hundreds more. About 400 Estonians were killed in the countryside as Russian troops put an end to attacks on landowners’ property; in Latvia, the nationalists gained control of considerable areas of countryside, and several expeditions were mounted before Russian control was restored, leaving over 1,100 dead. Many more were deported to Siberia.³

The First World War brought further conflict to the region. Initially, Russian armies advanced into East Prussia, but were decisively defeated at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes in 1914. In the following months, most of Latvia and Lithuania were occupied by German forces, but Estonia remained under Russian control. The collapse of Imperial Russia and Lenin’s seizure of power in 1917 led to further anarchy as the remnants of the Russian Army withdrew. Faced with a potentially protracted civil war, the Bolsheviks opened peace negotiations with Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey in December 1917, in the city of Brest-Litovsk, in an attempt to secure peace with the Central Powers, so that the Red Army could concentrate its efforts against the White Russians.

It was, according to those present, a most remarkable set of negotiations. Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were represented by aristocratic diplomats and senior army officers from patrician families, while the Bolshevik delegation was made up of dedicated revolutionaries. Prince Leopold of Bavaria found himself seated at dinner next to Anastasia Bizenko, who was described by the German Foreign Minister, Richard von Kühlmann, as looking like an elderly housekeeper. During the dinner, Bizenko told Leopold how she had shot General Sakharov, a city governor who she earnestly described as ‘an evil man’. At the beginning of the conference, the head of the Bolshevik delegation was Adolf Joffe, a longstanding supporter of Trotsky who had been in exile in Siberia until earlier that year. The leader of the Austro-Hungarian delegation, Graf Ottokar Czemin von und zu Chudenitz, was astonished to hear Joffe’s view that a universal application of self-governance to all nations, along the lines of the Bolshevik Revolution, would be followed by the people of those nations learning to love one another and to live in peace. It was the intention and ambition of the Bolsheviks, Joffe told his dinner-table neighbour, to export the revolution first to the rest of Europe, and then to the rest of the world. The war had not gone well for the Austro-Hungarian Empire; its initial invasion of Serbia had been a complete disaster, and a mixture of incompetent High Command, confusion brought about by the multitude of ethnicities and languages in the Empire, and intractable supply problems had prevented the Austro-Hungarian Army from contributing significantly to the German effort. Indeed, by 1916, the German military had frequently likened their alliance with the Habsburg Empire as like being shackled to a corpse. Now, with widespread unrest throughout the Empire and open mutiny in its demoralised armies, Chudenitz reacted with horror to Joffe’s comments:

I pointed out to him that we should not ourselves undertake any imitation of the Russian methods, and did not wish for any interference with our own internal affairs; this we must strictly forbid. If he persisted in endeavouring to carry out this Utopian plan of grafting his ideas on ourselves, he had better go back home by the next train, for there could be no question of making peace. Mr Joffe looked at me in astonishment with his soft eyes, was silent for a while, and then, in a kindly, almost imploring tone that I shall never forget, he said: ‘Still, I hope we may yet be able to raise the revolution in your country too.’⁴

Negotiations foundered in February 1918, when Leon Trotsky, who was now head of the Bolshevik delegation, decided that further progress was impossible, as the Germans were insisting on territorial concessions, while the Bolshevik position was to concede no territory, nor agree to any financial reparations to the Central Powers. There was a resumption of hostilities, which proved disastrous to the Russian position, with German troops pushing into Estonia, and when negotiations resumed a month later, the Bolsheviks were forced to accept far worse terms than those originally offered. Russia renounced any claim to Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, the Ukraine and Poland. In the words of the treaty, Germany and Austria-Hungary would determine the future fates of these territories in agreement with their populations. The reality of the situation was that the Germans would seek to establish client states, based upon whatever minority support they could gain.

Just as it seemed that German dreams of an empire in Eastern Europe that would allow it to rival the British Empire were about to be realised, the abdication of the Kaiser and the collapse of the German Empire in late 1918 changed the situation entirely. As the German army began to withdraw from the Baltic States, the Soviet leadership saw an opportunity to regain territory that had been conceded in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. From their perspective, the treaty had been imposed upon them when they were at their weakest, and as the successors to the Czar they regarded themselves entitled to the same territories that Czarist Russia had controlled. There also appeared to be some prospect of exporting the Bolshevik Revolution into the heart of Europe, and the establishment of new Soviet Socialist Republics in the Baltic States, Poland, and even Germany would see the dream outlined by Joffe during the Brest-Litovsk talks beginning to come true. Therefore, intent on reclaiming territory that many Russians regarded as rightly theirs, and seeking an opportunity to spread Bolshevism to the west, Soviet forces began to move against the Baltic region. Although this has been described as the Soviet Westward Offensive, and according to one source was given the codename Target Vistula, it seems that there was no central planned offensive.⁵ Rather, a series of uncoordinated movements occurred in the same region, with little if any overall coordination. In addition to geopolitical considerations, the animosity of the Soviet leadership towards the Baltic States certainly played a part in the development of events. Lenin told his staff, ‘Cross the frontier somewhere, even if only to the depth of a kilometre, and hang 100–1,000 of their civil servants and rich people.’⁶

If the war that followed had been limited to the invading Bolshevik forces and the fledgling nationalist armies of the three states, it would have been over in early 1919, with an almost complete victory for the Red Army. But there were many parties involved in the struggle, each with its own agenda. At the heart of these conflicting agendas lay the fundamental conundrum posed by the three states: was it feasible for them to exist as independent nations, or would they be forced to sacrifice some degree of independence to secure the support of one of their powerful neighbours?

The Bolshevik vision of the future of these states has already been mentioned. The Germans developed their ideas of the shape of Eastern Europe as the First World War progressed. The concept of Mitteleuropa as a German empire was first proposed in detail by Friedrich Naumann in 1915, in his book of the same name.⁷ He suggested that a new constellation of states could be created from the western parts of the Russian Empire; these states would gradually become more German as a result of settlement, and by providing an area for German economic exploitation Mitteleuropa would serve as a counterbalance to the British Empire’s colonies. Moreover Austria-Hungary and Turkey, both allies of Germany, would become increasingly dependent economically upon Germany and its vassal states, and would eventually become little more than vassal states themselves.

Several different levels of autonomy were proposed for the new states. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would be semi-autonomous, with almost complete control of government functions by Germany. They would be early targets for German colonisation, and consequently it was not expected they would remain even semi-autonomous for a prolonged period.⁸ It is important to bear in mind how the German concept of colonies differed from that of the British or French. Whilst Britain ensured that there was almost no autonomy in the non-white parts of the British Empire, there was no real intention to settle these areas with sufficient numbers of white British citizens to create a British majority. The Germans, in contrast, intended to ‘Germanise’ their colonies in full, and regarded all non-Germans, regardless of their skin colour, as inferior to Germans. In the German protectorate of South West Africa – modern-day Namibia – the forcible seizure of land from local people for German settlers, in an attempt to create an ‘African Germany’, led to an uprising by the Herero people.⁹ The German response was a genocidal war, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of Herero.¹⁰ This attitude to colonies persisted long after the fall of the Kaiser, and strongly influenced the behaviour of Nazi Germany towards occupied parts of Eastern Europe. Indeed, many of the key figures of the Nazi era had links with the Herero War; Hermann Goering’s father was one of the German officers involved in the genocides.

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk effectively gave Germany permission to create Mitteleuropa, and even though the treaty was renounced by Lenin shortly afterwards, on the grounds that it had been forced upon the Soviet Union, the Germans did not abandon their dream of an East European empire. The fall of the Kaiser was a huge setback, but, despite this, German policy in the Baltic States appears to have been one of trying to establish dominance of the area through client states, thus creating a pro-German status quo that would survive any final peace settlement with the Western Powers. Large numbers of German troops assembled as volunteer formations, known as the Freikorps, and played an important part in the independence wars in the Baltic States. Whilst their assistance in driving back the Bolshevik forces was invaluable, they had no intention of helping to create truly independent states; rather, they often worked to further the German vision of puppet regimes, either under direct German control, or dominated by the Baltic German aristocracy. It should be stressed that this was particularly the case in Latvia; Baltic Germans in Estonia were largely strong supporters of Estonian nationalism, and helped raise some of the first military units that fought for Estonian independence.

The Polish vision of the future of those parts of Europe caught between Germany and Russia was not entirely dissimilar to the German vision. The Poles wished for a constellation of independent states collectively known as Międzymorze (‘Between the seas’, referring to the belt of land running from the Baltic coast to the Adriatic Sea). These states would – of course – be dominated by Poland, which would be the largest member of the confederation. In addition, the Polish vision saw no possibility of an independent Lithuania. Instead, the old commonwealth between the two nations would be recreated, with Lithuania reduced to a semi-autonomous part of Poland. Whilst the Lithuanian nationalists welcomed the involvement of Poland in the war against the Bolshevik forces, they were less enthusiastic about what they perceived as Polish interference in Lithuania itself, including an attempted coup and the seizure of the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.

There was a further armed faction in the area, with a completely different vision of how matters should be arranged. The White Russians, still embroiled in their civil war against the Bolsheviks, were committed to a restoration of the Russian Empire, in which they were prepared to grant the Baltic States a limited degree of autonomy. The Germans sought to cooperate with the White Russians in the hope of creating a restored Russian Empire that would then support Germany against the British and French; the British and French, by contrast, were anxious to support the White Russians against the Bolsheviks, but tried to reconcile this with supporting the Baltic States in their bid for independence.

Whilst the end of the First World War brought peace to the west, turmoil continued in the east, with fighting among groups of different nationalities and loyalties on the territory of all three Baltic States, in the three Baltic wars of independence, though the interactions among these three wars make it almost impossible to look at any of them in isolation. As the nationalist movements of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia struggled to raise their own forces, they received aid of varying reliability from other countries. Estonia’s strong links with Finland resulted in several hundred Finns volunteering to fight for Estonian independence. A British light cruiser squadron delivered munitions and weapons, and also prevented the Soviet fleet based in Petrograd from making any significant foray into the Baltic. The Red Army units that invaded the three states were badly led, poorly trained and supplied in only the most haphazard of ways. Once the initial momentum of the Bolshevik invasion ceased, the Estonian nationalist government – with substantial support from Finland, the British cruisers and White Russian forces – swiftly regained control of its territory. Latvia was almost completely overrun by the Red Army, but the Baltic Germans and the Freikorps under the command of Rüdiger von der Goltz managed to retain control of a small bridgehead around the port of Liepāja, and in conjunction with other German forces in northern Latvia, Goltz’s units and the small Latvian nationalist army retook Riga. Thereafter, as Goltz tried to establish a pro-German government in place of the nationalist administration, there was confused fighting between the Germans and the Latvians, with Estonian forces aiding the latter, ultimately resulting in the expulsion of the Freikorps from Latvia.

In Lithuania, the relationship with both Germany and Poland played a major part in the course of the country’s war of independence, and also helped shape its fate in the years that followed. During the Brest-Litovsk negotiations, the Germans had made an offer to Lithuania: Germany would recognise Lithuania’s independence in return for permanent federation with Germany, with matters such as defence, foreign affairs, and currency being controlled by Berlin. The Vilnius Conference, a body of Lithuanian nationalists, considered this offer, and responded that it would accept it, provided that Lithuania could retain autonomy over both its internal affairs and foreign policy. This latter point was incompatible with the German requirement for alignment on military issues, and Germany rejected the proposal. Nevertheless, on 11 December 1917, the Vilnius Council voted to accept the German offer subject to the conditions it had already stipulated, and accordingly made what amounted to a limited announcement of independence. This proved to be a controversial move, and was criticised by Lithuanians both at home and in exile, who felt that the concessions to Germany were too great. It also attracted the ire of the Entente Powers, who were still at war with Germany. In January 1918, the Vilnius Council attempted to modify its announcement, adding an additional stipulation that Lithuania should be granted a national assembly of regional constituents. The Germans, who had already made clear their opposition to the council’s previous conditions, rejected this latest requirement. The council now found itself facing hostility from all quarters, and many of its members threatened to resign. On 16 February, it agreed to issue a new announcement of Lithuanian independence, but this time without any reference to a permanent alliance with Germany. The German occupying forces prevented any publication of this announcement within Lithuania, though it was widely reported in the German press, and news inevitably spread back into Lithuania itself.

In March 1918, following the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Germany announced that it recognised Lithuanian independence on the terms that the Vilnius Council had announced on 11 December. Wrangling over the precise nature of this independence continued, and in June, the council invited the Count of Württemberg to become monarch of Lithuania. This placed an intolerable strain on the council, and several members resigned. In any event, the German government refused to accept this arrangement, and prevented the would-be King Mindaugas II from travelling to his new country.¹¹ The frustrated members of the Vilnius Council found that Germany blocked almost every attempt they made to formulate policy, a deadlock that continued until the collapse of Germany in November. At this stage, the council revoked its invitation to the Count of Württemberg. It also expanded its membership to include Jewish and Belarusian members, in an attempt to increase its popular appeal with these two communities; at first, the Jewish community was offered two seats, but this was declined, with the Jewish leaders demanding that their membership should be proportional to the Jewish population within Lithuania. Consequently, they were offered a third seat. A new Lithuanian government was proclaimed, with Augustinas Voldemaras as prime minister. Antanas Smetona, who had chaired the council when it first formed, became President.

Lithuania found itself in a chaotic state. Groups of German soldiers, often refusing to follow the orders of their officers, crossed the country in a steady stream towards Germany. The new government had no means of collecting taxes, and consequently was unable to carry out any significant functions. Voldemaras announced that Lithuania did not intend to threaten its neighbours, and therefore concluded that there was no urgency to create an army. Unfortunately for Voldemaras, the Bolsheviks had a very different attitude, and swiftly overran the eastern parts of Lithuania. On 5 January 1919, they reached Vilnius.

The historical capital of Lithuania was a multi-ethnic city. A German census in 1916 suggested that half of the city’s population was Polish, and a substantial part of the remaining population was Jewish, leaving the Lithuanians in a very small minority; however, other surveys suggested that the population of the surrounding area was predominantly Lithuanian.¹² Indeed, the Jewish population of Vilnius had earned the city the appellation of the ‘Jerusalem of the North’ from Napoleon. Such a multi-ethnic mix was bound to create additional tensions, which could be exploited by any outside power that chose to do so. Belatedly, the Lithuanian nationalist government started to raise troops, but these were in no position, either tactically or in terms of their strength, to defend Vilnius; the most active defenders were pro-Polish partisans, but they were unable to prevent the Red Army from seizing the city. From here, the Bolshevik troops gradually advanced west, but their drive ran out of momentum as their almost non-existent supply lines failed to replenish the troops. The Lithuanians had also succeeded in raising German volunteers to fight for them, particularly in Saxony, and these veteran soldiers proved to be a formidable force.

Another army that was operating in the area was that of Poland. Already at war with Russia, the Poles launched a major offensive against the Red Army in the spring of 1919. Józef Piłsudski, the Polish head of state, planned the operation with his customary meticulous attention to detail, launching diversionary attacks on Lida, Navahrudak and Baranovichi. His main objective, though, was Vilnius, with a force of 800 cavalry, 2,500 infantry and artillery assigned to the task. Rather than wait for the slower infantry to arrive, the Polish cavalry commander, Colonel Wladyslaw Belina-Prazmowski, decided to attack with his horsemen on 18 April. He swept around the city and attacked from the east, taking the Soviet garrison by surprise and overrunning the suburbs. As the Bolshevik forces rallied, the Polish infantry began to arrive, and with their support – and aided by Polish partisans from Vilnius – Belina slowly gained the upper hand, clearing the city of Russian forces by the end of 21 April.¹³

By the end of June, the Red Army had been driven out of almost all of Lithuania, and negotiations now began about the border between Poland and Lithuania. This proved to be a difficult business, not least because Piłsudski did not wish to see the creation of an independent Lithuania, favouring the restoration of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Deadlocked over the future status of the Vilnius region – claimed by both countries, but occupied by Polish troops – the Lithuanians and Poles asked the Conference of Ambassadors of the Entente Powers to intervene. At this stage, the difference in diplomatic status between Lithuania and Poland became starkly apparent. Poland had been recognised by the Entente Powers, and was even specifically mentioned in one of Woodrow Wilson’s famous Fourteen Points:

An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.¹⁴

By contrast, Lithuania had not yet received international recognition. In many circles, particularly those that favoured a restoration of the Russian Empire, Lithuania’s independence was distinctly unwelcome. It can therefore have been of little surprise to anyone when the Conference of Ambassadors chose not to return Vilnius and the surrounding area to Lithuania.

Although he was opposed to Lithuanian independence, Piłsudski was acutely aware that any future commonwealth could only succeed with the agreement of the Lithuanian people, and he made every effort to persuade the Lithuanians to cooperate with his plans. He and his subordinates proposed that the fate of the Vilnius region be decided in a plebiscite, but the Lithuanians rejected this. But the Bolsheviks were not quite finished. In 1920, a revitalised Red Army once more invaded, driving the Poles out of Vilnius. Shortly after, Soviet Russia and Lithuania agreed a peace treaty, as part of which the Vilnius region was assigned to Lithuania. Such an arrangement was unacceptable to the Poles, and in October the Polish general Lucjan Żeligowski apparently mutinied and marched on Vilnius, taking the city on 9 October. He then declared the creation of the Republic of Central Lithuania, which merged with Poland in 1923. It later transpired that Żeligowski’s mutiny was nothing of the sort, and had actually been ordered by the Polish head of state, Piłsudski. Vastly outnumbered, the Lithuanian army could do nothing to counter this seizure of the region, and the Vilnius question remained a source of severe friction between the two countries throughout the inter-war years, preventing any possible cooperation between Poland and Lithuania. The Baltic wars of independence were therefore a manifestation of the conflict between two alternative visions: on the one hand, the three states had strong nationalist aspirations, while on the other hand, their more powerful neighbours – Soviet Russia, Germany and even Poland – regarded them as too small and weak to survive without being part of a larger power bloc. This question would be subjected to even more brutal inspection in the Second World War, and the resolution of the issue would take over 70 years and cost millions of lives before independence was finally achieved towards the end of the century.

Chapter 1

MOLOTOV, RIBBENTROP AND THE FIRST SOVIET OCCUPATION

The decade that preceded the Second World War saw major changes in all three Baltic States. Originally created as republics, they all adopted totalitarian rule. Estonia’s head of state, Konstantin Päts, used a threatened coup by hard-line anti-Soviet and anti-parliamentary nationalists to declare rule by decree in 1934. In the same year, the Latvian leader, Kārlis Ulmanis, also dismissed his parliament, partly as a response to the worldwide economic situation. In the case of Lithuania, a military coup in 1926 – triggered by growing criticism of the government for its attempts to negotiate with the Soviet Union – abolished parliament and placed Antanas Smetona in command of the country. It is noteworthy that in all three cases, a powerful motivation behind the unrest that led directly or indirectly to dictatorship was growing anti-Bolshevik sentiment. Much of this was due to persisting concerns that the Soviet Union might one day attempt to restore Russian control of the region. At the same time, resentment at German attempts to establish hegemony in the region in the aftermath of the First World War remained strong. Consequently, the people of the Baltic States, and their leaders, watched developments between their powerful neighbours with concern. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, announced on the eve of the German invasion of Poland in 1939, came as a shock to the Western Powers, and an even greater shock to the Baltic States, appearing to confirm that neither neighbour was remotely interested in the ongoing independence of the three nations. But the background to the Pact was that despite their dramatic ideological differences, the two nations had attempted to define non-aggression treaties for many years.

In the aftermath of the First World War, Weimar Germany signed two treaties with the Soviet Union. The first was the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922, in which the two powers renounced any territorial or financial claims against each other. This was followed four years later by the Treaty of Berlin, which declared a five-year pact of non-aggression, and neutrality by either power should the other be involved in a conflict. In 1931, an extension to the latter treaty was agreed, but almost immediately relations between the two countries deteriorated, a process that accelerated after Hitler came to power in 1933. Persecution of the German Communist Party, overt hostility in diplomatic arenas and the publication of the second volume of Mein Kampf, calling for German expansion into Russian territory and equating communists with Jews, all played a part.

Maxim Maximovich Litvinov, the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs for most of the 1930s, regarded Nazi Germany as the greatest threat to the Soviet Union. His preferred policy to contain the German threat was to build strong links with France and Britain, but Stalin’s insistence that any such alliance had to include the right of the Soviet Union to station troops in Estonia and Latvia made agreement almost impossible, given the role that France and Britain had played in helping Estonia drive the Red Army from its territory during the wars of independence. For Stalin, the proximity of the border between the Soviet Union and the Baltic States – particularly Estonia – and key locations, such as Leningrad, made a Soviet military presence in the three states a defensive necessity. In 1936, the NKVD (Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del or ‘People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs’, the Soviet Secret Police) reported that there were growing links between many Estonian government officials and Germany. In addition, the NKVD report continued, the Estonian government believed that the Latvians were already ‘completely in the service of Germany’. By contrast, the ordinary people of the two countries were reported to be pro-Soviet.¹

To a considerable extent, this report almost certainly was written with foreknowledge of what Stalin wished to hear, and its content was designed to ensure that the writer did not offend his superiors. Nevertheless, intelligence from other sources appeared to confirm the views of the Germans and the Soviets that the three states would be forced to choose a side. In March 1937, a Finnish envoy to the region reported:

The territory of Lithuania is situated between Germany, the Soviet Union and Poland. If there is a clash between these states, it will threaten the existence of Lithuania. Such a frightening prospect obliges Lithuania to seek the safest position. It is axiomatic that [the Lithuanian government] seeks the protection of Great Britain and France – in vain, as they are far away. Neutrality? But in practice, neutrality means complete isolation. Thus, Lithuania has to choose between Poland, Germany and the Soviet Union, and Lithuania … [will choose] the latter. The essential difficulties in the relationship of Lithuania with Germany and Poland, do not exist in the relationship between the Soviet Union and Lithuania.²

Negotiations between the Soviet Union and Germany were hamstrung by Litvinov’s Jewish ancestry, and this was one of the reasons for his dismissal by Stalin in May 1939.³ After the Munich Agreement of 1938, Stalin felt that there was little prospect of the capitalist powers containing Hitler, and he started to consider direct negotiations. Litvinov’s dismissal came during the era of Stalin’s widespread purges of the army and other organisations, and it was perhaps unsurprising that the sacking of the commissar was accompanied by the arrival of large numbers of NKVD troops at the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs; many of Litvinov’s aides were arrested and interrogated in a vain attempt to secure incriminating evidence against their leader.

Litvinov’s replacement was Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, who had been a Bolshevik almost from the start of the Communist Party. Born with the surname Scriabin, he adopted the name Molotov, derived from the Russian word molot, meaning hammer, for his political work. Many of his contemporaries preferred the nickname ‘Stone Arse’, on account of his long hours of work. It was characteristic of his reputation for pedantry that he often corrected colleagues, pointing out that Lenin had originally referred to him as ‘Iron Arse’. He was far less keen on reminding people of the occasion that Lenin had condemned him for being the author of ‘the most shameful bureaucratism, and the most stupid’.⁴ He owed his rise more to his consistent loyalty to Stalin than to any political excellence, and had a reputation for brutality; he played a leading role in the wave of arrests and executions that did so much harm to the Soviet Union during the 1930s. As soon as he was appointed, Stalin instructed him to purge the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of Jews, using the phrase ‘Clean out the Synagogue.’⁵ Molotov later recalled this order: ‘Thank God for these words! Jews formed an absolute majority in the leadership and among the ambassadors. It was not good.’⁶ The fact that Molotov’s wife was Jewish appeared to make little difference to his enthusiasm for following his leader’s instructions.

Tentative moves towards negotiations between Germany and the Soviet Union started in April 1939, but although economic measures were agreed, at least in outline, during July, there was little progress on serious diplomatic talks until several weeks after Litvinov’s dismissal. Tensions had been raised during the summer when Latvia, under pressure from Germany, agreed to sign a non-aggression pact; Latvian diplomats joked lugubriously that ‘Germany can now sleep in peace: Latvia will not attack it.’⁷ Stalin and Molotov feared that they might find themselves with the unwelcome presence of German troops within easy striking distance of major Soviet cities, particularly after Nikitin, the Soviet ambassador in Tallinn, reported that German and Estonian officials had met to discuss collaboration in the construction of a major road from the Estonian–Latvian border to the north⁸; consequently, the Soviets increased their own diplomatic approaches to Berlin. Despite this, progress remained slow, not least because the agendas of the two countries diverged considerably.

Stalin’s requirements from a treaty with Germany were more than simply a non-aggression pact. In order to ensure that Leningrad could be defended, it was highly desirable for the Soviet Union to be given a free hand to place troops in Estonia. Although the border with Latvia was a little further away from vital locations, and the land route from this border into the Soviet interior was a difficult one, as the Wehrmacht would discover in 1941, a similar argument could be made for Latvia as for Estonia. The Western Powers had steadfastly refused to countenance granting the Soviet Union such freedom of action, and although an Anglo-French delegation travelled to Moscow in August 1939, there was little prospect of an agreement that would satisfy Stalin. Hitler, by contrast, about to invade Poland, was anxious to secure an agreement with the Soviet Union, and had no compunction about agreeing spheres of influence with his large eastern neighbour. On 15 August, the German ambassador to Moscow, Graf Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, informed Molotov that the German Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, wished to have a meeting, and that matters such as a non-aggression pact and a division of Eastern Europe into spheres of influence could be settled to the mutual advantage of the two powers. On 17 August, Kliment Voroshilov, the Commissar for Defence, proposed to the Anglo-French delegation a treaty of mutual military assistance, which would require Poland and Rumania to allow the passage of Soviet troops in the event of a German attack. When the British representative replied that he had no authority to agree such a deal, Stalin lost patience and decided to cement arrangements with Germany.⁹

Two days later, Molotov summoned Schulenburg and presented him with a draft non-aggression pact. On 21 August, the Anglo-French delegation was dismissed, even as Ribbentrop prepared to travel to Moscow. The German Foreign Minister arrived on 23 August, and met Stalin and Molotov that afternoon. The broad outline of a deal was agreed within hours, and the pact, designed to last ten years, was signed at 0200hrs on 24 August.

The treaty became public on the same day, and was greeted with shock throughout the world, by both allies and potential foes of Germany and the Soviet Union. Ambassador Nikitin in Tallinn reported with great satisfaction that the bewilderment of the Estonians was complete, and that the government was totally disoriented by this new development.¹⁰ Neither of the signatories had any illusions about the pact. On the very day that the pact was signed, Stalin joined his closest associates on a duck hunt, telling them: ‘Of course it’s all a game to see who can fool whom. I know what Hitler’s up to. He thinks he’s outsmarted me but actually it’s I who’s tricked him.’¹¹

Hitler, too, regarded the treaty as merely a temporary expedient. As preparations for the invasion of Poland progressed, he gave his views to his followers: ‘There is no time to lose. War must come in my lifetime. This pact was only meant to stall for time, and, gentlemen, to Russia will happen what I have practised with Poland – we will crush the Soviet Union.’¹²

Caught between the two powers, the Baltic States struggled to adapt to the sudden change in their world. For several years, they had been pressured, often overtly, by Germany and the Soviet Union to choose which they would support. Suddenly, the two opposed powers were friends. They struggled to make sense of this dramatic shift and its effect on their own status, unaware that a protocol to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact had already decided their fate. The text of the protocol, secret at the time and denied by Moscow until the fall of the Soviet Union, gave Stalin his desired territorial gains to protect the approaches to Leningrad:

In the event of a territorial and political rearrangement of the regions making up the Baltic States (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) the northern frontier of Lithuania will simultaneously serve as the frontier of the spheres of interest of Germany and the USSR. In this, Lithuania’s interest in connection with the Vilnius District is recognised by both parties.¹³

Given longstanding German claims to Estonia and Latvia, based on historical involvement in the area, the ease with which Germany conceded these territories to the Soviet Union is indicative of how keen Hitler was to secure a deal with Stalin, but nothing less would have appeased the Soviet leader, who regarded the deployment of the Red Army in the two countries as an essential requirement for the defence of Leningrad. At first, the Germans requested that their sphere of influence should include Courland, the western part of Latvia, but Stalin responded that the entire region had been part of the Russian Empire, and that the USSR therefore had an overriding claim to the territories.

As war between Germany and Poland drew ever closer, the German envoy to Lithuania, Erich Zechlin, informed the Lithuanian government on 29 August that in the event of war, Berlin would require Lithuania to observe total neutrality; should this not occur, Germany